Actual rating: 4.5/5

I finished Starry Night, Blurry Dreams this morning, after binge-reading it, so now is about time I give my thoughts about it.

Starry Night, Blurry Dreams is a collection of poems playing with words and their representations as drawings. The poems are rather short (between a line or two, three at most), so this book is very quick to read, but everything you'll find in it will be beautiful and enjoyable. The main themes evoked are those around love, dreams, life in general—on the whole, I would definitely summarise Henn Kim's poetry in one word: human. It is impossible not to relate to some poems since they pretty much explore the different moments of everybody's routine, from a morning coffee/cup of tea to a movie night at home with a lover.

But I think that what people will love the most about Starry Night, Blurry Dreams is the drawings. They are aesthetically so pleasing to observe, very simple yet you could get lost in them very easily. I love that Henn Kim chooses to keep them in black and white, to match them with the words on paper, which are legends, titles of each drawing. Yes, that's how we could see: Starry Night, Blurry Dreams is like a painting exhibition in a museum, but instead of walking to the next painting, you just need to turn the page. This is a concept that I personally find very charming, and that's partly what made me want to read this book. I already knew some pieces included in it, because I knew Henn Kim before via Instagram, but it was very interesting to rediscover her through a book encompassing all her works.

The only thing I would reproach to this book is that some poems are very similar, perhaps too similar sometimes. The repetition of some themes with very similar drawings made me think that some were maybe not necessary in the end, but that's a personal opinion that does not remove the beauty of the whole work.

I would totally recommend this book to people who love this kind of poetry, associating poems with drawings such as Henn Kim or Rupi Kaur do. Also, I would encourage people who love Korean poetry to read this book!

Thank you so much Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the opportunity of reviewing Starry Night, Blurry Dreams!